CM half marathon 2015: well, that was a bad idea

On Saturday, I ran the Country Music half marathon!

It was kind of a bad idea. Mainly because I’d been sick for three days before the race and could barely breathe through my nose when I got to the start line. Sooo…. yeah.

At least the weather held off, though! We were supposed to get heavy thunderstorms but I didn’t even feel a single drop of rain. All I felt was my whole body being like “noooooooo, why are you doing this” during every single step of the race.

I could give you a mile by mile recap, but basically the story was like this: I started off with two really great miles, then realized that I was definitely not well enough to hold a 7:00 pace. Then I hung around 8:00/mile for a few more miles before I really started tanking. I had a terrible headache; my chest felt like there was a bag of bricks sitting on it. Also, I could still not breathe through my nose and my throat felt like there was GU permanently flowing through it. Yep.

By mile 8 I knew I was done. I haven’t hit the wall since the Gettysburg Marathon a few years ago, and now remember just how miserable humbling it feels. I even considered dropping out of the race for a bit, but decided to plow my way through to the finish line at whatever pace I could muster. It was a weird feeling — even though my Garmin said I was well in the 8-9 minute/mile range, I felt like I was sprinting at a 5-minute pace. My whole body was just exhausted. This wasn’t mind-over-body situation, it was 100% body-over-mind.

Since I knew that I was physically way out of whack, I didn’t feel bad for stopping and walking a few times. A lot of runners would pass and encourage me to keep running or pick it up; but then one runner just said, “It’s okay to walk.” That was my favorite. I even teared up a little bit (don’t worry, I cry in like 75% of races).

Anyways, I finally made it to the finish line! It was slow and really painful but I did it. I grabbed a banana and took a frowny photo for y’all before heading home, going through another box of Kleenex, and taking a nice long nap. 1:48:19 — my second-slowest half marathon to date.

What’s crazy is that even though I ran a good 1-1.5 minutes slower than my goal pace and was more than capable of running 13 miles, I was really sore on Sunday. Even today, I’m still a bit achy. I guess that’s a sign that I gave it everything I could!

Even though I bombed it, I still don’t feel so bad about how I did in this race. Though I do feel a bit mad at my stubborn self for making myself run it. Next time I’ve got a nasty cold, I promise to stay clear of start lines. The end